Ottawa police fail to enter suspect’s devices after 175 million password attempts

An Ottawa judge has ruled police must return phones after they tried 175 million times to crack the passcodes.

The decision comes after the Ottawa Police Service asked the judge to retain three devices seized in October 2022 under a warrant as part of a child pornography investigation.

The authorities wanted to keep the devices for another two years.

“The Crown,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Carter said, ” is asking for an order to find a needle in a very large haystack.”

With more than 44 million possible passcodes for each phone, Carter said the 175 million attempts were “an infinitesimal number” of potential answers.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, the three devices are protected by “complex” passcodes, and the millions of attempts by investigators to crack the codes, including “brute force” dictionary attacks, were proven unsuccessful.

The publication notes the passcode dictionaries include “leet speak,” which replaces letters with numbers or symbols. For example, this would change “alert to “@lert” and “fear” to “f34r.” Police used general password dictionaries and specialized ones featuring interests related to the suspect.

Carter said the court had to balance an individual’s property rights against the preservation of evidence, and without the passcodes, the phones had no evidentiary value.

“While it is certainly possible that they may find the needle in the next two years, the odds are so incredibly low as to be virtually non-existent,” Carter wrote as part of his decision ordering police to return or destroy the devices.

The investigation is ongoing.

Via: Ottawa Citizen